Twitter

Former Apple falls from the Twitter tree
Less than six months after taking up a gig as Twitter’s head of communications, ex-Apple PR maven Natalie Kerris has parted ways with the company. Twitter did not say why Kerris left the company, but released a statement thanking her and wishing her all the best. Twitter’s CMO Leslie Berland will take over the role full-time, in addition to her existing post.

Drum roll please …
Forget what’s taking place in Rio, there’s another epic competition heating up around the globe. Twitter this week announced a new awards competition to recognise the top advertisers on the platform. The aptly-named ‘Twitter Awards’ are given across six categories. Interested in entering? First thing you’ll need to do is summarise your campaign in 140 characters … seriously.

Facebook

Facebook Live adds ads
After months of hinting at the prospect, Facebook has confirmed it is experimenting with ads on its livestreaming platform. The new ad format is currently being tested on a small group of publishers, allowing them to insert 15-second ‘commercial breaks’ into videos after five minutes of Facebook Live streaming.

The Mall of Facebook
Two new Pages features were announced this week allowing businesses to sell products and services directly through Facebook. The Shop feature is currently being rolled out across 10 “high-growth and emerging markets” (mainly in South East Asia). Meanwhile, the Service section, which is currently only available to professional services, will begin a general roll-out in coming weeks.

Video/Visual

‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’
The social story of the week is undeniably Instagram’s shameless – and perhaps, genius – rip-off of Snapchat. The new (uniquely named) Stories feature allows users to share short videos, which disappear af­­­­ter 24 hours, with their followers. The new feature has been criticized for its unoriginality, but Instagram may be onto a winner.­­

YouTube Kids becomes more kid-friendly
YouTube is giving parents more control over what their kids watch online. The video giant has integrated its Kids app with its premium service YouTube Red, meaning YouTube Kids can now be watched ad-free, offline and uninterrupted for a monthly fee.

Be gone, Insta trolls
Pesky Instagram trolls and spam accounts beware! The photo sharing service has started rolling out a new comment filtering feature, which allows select users to block certain words from appearing underneath their posts. The feature is being trialled by a group of Instagram celebrities, including model Chrissy Teigen who elected to block the keywords ‘colon’ and ‘Trump’… among others.

LinkedIn videos
LinkedIn is finally jumping on the video sharing bandwagon with the introduction of Record – a standalone app that allows users to post 30-second long videos. The feature is currently only available to a group of 500 influencers.

Social Winners

The power of social media
Here’s a heartwarming story for your Friday! A YouTube prankster has helped reunite a missing woman with her family, after posting a video of himself handing out sandwiches to homeless people in downtown LA. On the other side of the country a 10-year-old boy was watching online when he spotted his missing mother in the video.

Social Losers

Mistaken identity
Well… this is awkward. The team behind Manchester City player Ilkay Gundogan’s Twitter account failed spectacularly this week when they mistakenly tweeted from his account as Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil. The media team, which is responsible for both players’ accounts, quickly deleted the tweet – a photo of Ozil – but not before incriminating screenshots were captured.

Creative Spot

Pokemon Go: The Revenge
Capitalising on the world’s current obsession with Pokemon, a Swiss tourism agency decided to film four life-sized Pikachus on a rampage through the city of Basel. The results were entertaining … and super effective!

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